Life Goes on During the Bombardment

MC shot some video footage of Sderot early this morning, as normal day-to-day life continues despite the artillery fire that can be heard almost constantly not far away in Gaza.

Vlad includes this note about the footage:

A friend of ours living in Sderot sent some footage last night of what can be heard to be some heavy fighting, audible from his home. There are several clips put together here but not edited at all, other than clips stitched together, in terms of time. So the frequency of explosions you here is what the residents are hearing. Before he started his camera, MC reported also hearing drones, helicopters and machine gun fire. By the time the camera started the fighting had moved farther away but you still get a solid sense of it in this clip.

I added the graphical aids to give a sense of scale. Thank you MC for doing this.

Many thanks Vlad Tepes for uploading this video:

MC lives in the southern Israeli city of Sderot. For his previous essays, see the MC Archives.

9 thoughts on “Life Goes on During the Bombardment

  1. Baron, Dymphna:

    You are both Americans. Not Israelis. I know Americans. They have a heart. The following is a video of a real bombardment (of Shejayiya, where Israel has imposed “collective punishment” upon the civilians because it lost 7 soldiers while trying to enter that neighborhood. At last count, over 60 civilians (many women and children) have died there).

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZ66iHMCQls

    Baron and Dymphna: what Israel is doing is indefensible. By telling only one half of the story, they are fooling the Americans. For instance, their well rehearsed public spokesmen say “well, Hamas is shooting rockets at us. We are only defending ourself. Which country wouldn’t?” Wrong. Gaza has been under severe blockade by Israel since 2008. First of all, other countries don’t blockade entire territories this way. Second, which country wouldn’t resist such a blockade? Hamas is resisting this blockade, and any self-respecting American would too, if America were blockaded this way. Remember, Gaza is a large prison, housing 2 million people (of whom very very few are associated with Hamas). Which country does this to an entire population as a form of collective punishment? Israel is doing this. Also deliberately left out of this narrative is what led to the recent round of rockets. After the 3 Israelis were killed (and Hamas issued a denial), Israel went on a rampage against Hamas in the West Bank, imprisoning 300 suspected Hamas operatives. Many of these will never be seen again–that’s the Israeli system. Now evidence suggests the 3 Israelis were killed by a powerful Hebron arab clan that has had a history of opposing Hamas.

    Let me repeat: I hate Islam. I think it is a sick, evil cult. But let’s also look at the human side of this. What Israel is doing (both to Palestinians and to Americans) is simply not right. I will not let my hatred for Islam cloud a very simple situation. Israel is acting like a colonial land grabber in Palestine. And it is able to do because of a very powerful, very insidious lobby inside America which keeps Americans fooled about the real nature and causes of the conflict.

    Baron, Dymphna, let me repeat. You are Americans. Americans have a heart. I love Americans. Pl. use your hearts and minds to see what is going on in the occupied territories. Israel’s propaganda machine is truly awesome. And Hamas’s english language website is “still under construction.” ‘Nuff said.

    I will continue to visit your great blog for articles on Islam. I think Islam must be eradicated. And I think American foreign policy must be freed from the Israel lobby so that the highly decent American people can see the misuse of their power to fulfill someone else’s goals (in this case, Zionism’s).

    Another fact: in 1920, the jewish population in Palestine was below 7%. Today, they control all of Palestine. 77% as the state of Israel, and they have turned the remaining 23% into a large open air prison. And they have done this because they were able to fool America. America is as much their victim as Palestinians are.

    I am Hindu. In 1971, the Pakistani army slaughtered about 2.3 million Hindus in Bangladesh. It did so with American weapons, and American political backing. It was able to do so because it was able to control US foreign policy in that region better. Unfortunately, this happens when one is powerful—for every friend, you will meet 99 who only want your power for their ends.

    Thanks!
    Yog
    PS: I am Hindu. That is why I also hate Islam. Islam has killed an estimated 60-80 million Hindus over the centuries. So I have zero sympathy for Islam. But a human being is a human being. Let us first look at human suffering, and also have the firm conviction to say that Islam as an ideology is pure evil.

    • Yog —

      You are mistaken. The current round of Hamas rocket attacks on southern Israel began on June 11, the day BEFORE the three Israeli teenagers were kidnapped and killed.

      I’ll be blogging more about this eventually, when I have time. But the rocket attacks were NOT a result of the Israeli response to the kidnappings. They began the day before. Any assertion that they were a response to the Israeli arrests of Hamas people is factually untrue.

    • Yog,

      You should know better than to offer this nonsense to the readers of GoV.

      If you have read the Gita, which I’m sure you have, you will understood that the Battle of Kurukshetra took place because the Kauravas refused to let the Pandavas have a little land on which to farm. As a result, the battle had to be fought. Among those killed by the Pandavas were some wonderful sages and saints who were obligated to fight on the side of the losers: the Kauravas.
      Please note that the Pandavas made the decision to fight, not as a result of the Kauravas firing rockets of threatening them with bloody annihilation, but because the Pandavas had to eat; to support their families. The Kauravas were thus regarded as evil.
      What would you have thought if the Pandavas or even the Kauravas had used their women-folks or their children as human shields?
      More to the point: what would Krishna have thought of this?
      Moving forward in time, what would that great Kshetriya, Vivekananda, have thought about this kind of savagery?
      I believe you have lost your moral bearings in all of this. If an enemy’s intention is to slaughter you and your family and your people, the only way out is to kill him. And trying to avoid “collateral damage,” noble as it is, is never perfect. You may personally find this out one day, if the Muslims of India decide to take a lesson in terrorism from Hamas. Think back to the war of independence and the killing that took place during this war. Neither the Hindus nor the Muslims appeared to be saintly to the rest of the world…

    • If you hate Islam, Yog, and think it must be eradicated, what are you going to do with the Muslim Palestinians? Make an exception? You’ll eradicate every Muslim except the Palestinian Muslims? How about the Israeli Muslims, who live in Israel, vote in the elections, and DON’T have to serve in the Israeli Defense Forces if they don’t want to?

      Would you go into Israel and “eradicate” them, too?

      Perhaps no continent has suffered as cruelly under the yoke of Islam as has India. The cultural and human destruction is past being able to calculate. And the lesson you draw from that is Israel must go?? There is a middle term missing from your logic that messes up your ability to reach a reasoned conclusion.

      I spent a long time responding to your email yesterday. I’m done talking to you about it except to remind you that America’s “foreign policy” has little policy in it. As I told you then, they hop from lilypad to lily pad, trying not to fall into the Pond of Despond – a pond those amateurs created themselves.

      I repeat: there are NO grown-ups in charge in Washington D.C. We can only hunker down and hope to survive the random destruction by these spoiled children.

      I do wish you’d not made your comments public. Your theses are wrong and thus your conclusions can only be erroneous. No one here is buying the kool aid you’re drinking.

    • Yog, as a Hindu you should know better than to trust the word of a Muslim. The blockade of Gaza is a gross exaggeration. The blockade removes lethal weapons and explosives only. Even concrete is allowed through for it could be used to build hospitals, roads, school etc. But no it is used to build military tunnels.

      Your Israel as a land grabber. You as a Hindu should review the tactics the Muslims used to partition India and create Pakistan and Bengali. When you do you will see what they are land grabbing – just as they grabbed you lands to become Muslim Majorities – though the same violence and warfare. Your people fled, Muslims became the majorities and then Janna called for elections.

      You don’t know who is on your side Yoga and there are two many things you do not seem to know about your enemy.

  2. Sorry, as earlier, the comment is only a communication for you, both of whom I regard as friends.

    I will check email later today also (I saw that you have replied to my earlier communication. Thanks, and I will read it soon).

  3. Yog

    You too leave out the inconvenient truths; when the Egyptians illegally occupied Gaza in 1948 nobody protested. Israel had to put up with 17 years of terrorist infiltration,

    In 1967 Egypt attacked Israel and lost, and again in1973. Gaza had by this time become part of Israel along with the whole of Sinai. Because Egypt was the aggressor Isreal’s creation of a buffer zone was legal.

    Gaza prospered under Israeli rule.

    In 2005 Israel was forced to hand Gaza to the PA by the EU and the US, amidst guarantees that no aggression would be launched from Gaza.

    Sderot has has 13 years now of constant missile attacks from Gaza, what does your country do when your neighbours launch missiles at you? Do you nuke them, or do you try to stop the missiles getting in by a blockade?

    Israel could flatten Gaza in 24 hours. Instead they use a more humanitarian stance but people like you don’t or won’t do the research to find the truths, they listen to the propaganda instead. Try looking at what the Egyptians are saying at the moment over at MEMRI http://www.memri.org/egypt-news-media.html

    The Hamas covenant declares Hamas intention to kill ALL Jews. Do you too hate Jews? many do, would you too deny Jews a right to defend themselves, many do. Do You?

  4. Yog, When I see phrases like “collective punishment” and the like used to describe what is happening in Gaza, my innate anti-communism starts to stir. This phrase has been in use by the commy left for ten years to my knowledge. This is not surprising. India has been subjected to a barrage of pro-communist propaganda since so-called independence.

    I spent a good deal of time in India in the 1990’s and if I had to use one word to describe the country, that word would be “hypocritical.” Successive Indian governments aligned themselves with the former soviet union whilst pocketing vast amounts of western cash in foreign aid.

    Finally, Yog, before you weep a further waterfall of crocodile tears for “Palestinians,” whatever they might be, just consider the plight of Indian Christians being persecuted by Hindus in India and ask yourself, is that a proportionate response?

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